[network] @ADMIN; Arrival

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[devoutish]

It's another mystery without an answer.

[heavensreader]

But it's - ! [He doesn't understand, he doesn't know - ] I need to know, I have to! [Because if none of it was real -

She stops herself with an all but visible violence. This could still be a trick. It could. And the secrets she has now, if real, are worth a thousand times the paltry ones she had before.]

[devoutish]

We've all got to know, Kesara. But you remember this from being here before, don't you. All these mysteries, and very few answers. Answers we've got to work for.

[heavensreader]

[Maybe it's not a chastisement, but she hears it as such. Words spoken to a child. She drops her head, twists her hands as they ache to sink into her hair.]

Things happened -[she can't tell him what, but she can't not tell him something.] Things happened that mattered. To me. That I have to know if... if they were a dream then everything is different. I'm different, Mr. Solomons.

[devoutish]

Assume they were real. Maybe you didn't go home, maybe you just dreamed of home, but assume that what you saw really did happen.

[That's the approach that makes the most sense to him, anyway.]

Will you tell me who you are now, Kesara?

[heavensreader]

[Will she?]

I learned a lot. [That comes easy. It's no secret.] Things I was meant to, and things I wasn't, just as sure. Lao Dian, he taught me more than just his language. He taught me how to watch people, and how to see and hear them while they don't see and hear me, and how to fool them into giving me money, or not taking my money, or taking someone else's money for me. He made me a little bit of a smuggler, like him.

[And that's the least of it.]

[devoutish]

And you're good at it, I'd wager.

[heavensreader]

I am He says that I have, [she wrinkles her nose,] "Heaven's gift for the shadow-work of war."

[devoutish]

I bet you do. I bet you're underestimated constantly, and you know just how to teach them all a lesson for it.

[heavensreader]

Oah, yes. I've played my part in schemes fit to raise even your hairs. I am Lao Dian's pride and he said if I were twenty years older he would marry me. [She says it as a matter of plain fact, with a hardness to her voice, because it all feels so terribly empty now.]

And none of it matters one whit because now I am here.

[devoutish]

[What the fuck, Lao Dian, that's a weird-ass thing to say to an eleven-year-old.]

I'm sorry, Kesara. I truly am. You'll just have to devote those skills of yours towards Norfinbury's puzzles for a bit instead.

[heavensreader]

[They weren't quite his words, but it was what she came away with from that night, when her new teacher has sketched out a future in which she could have all she wanted. Even a loving marriage, if that suited her, because there were other men like him in the world, only younger. Where is all of that now?]

I will. I'll have to. Just, just please don't make me think about all of those things I've learned, Mr. Solomons, they're no good here. They'll not help. In Norfinbury I must be an explorer and not a spy.

[devoutish]

All right, Kesara. No talk of spies; that's a promise from me.

Is that what you're gonna do, then? Explore? Take on the town?

[heavensreader]

[Her shoulders drop slightly. Relaxing, of sorts.]

It isn't truly exploring - not truly. But I want to survive and I want to leave here. And - I want to remember, after I leave,

[devoutish]

What makes it not true exploring, eh? Seems like true exploring to me.

[heavensreader]

True exploring is for the sake of knowledge. For the advancement of mankind. This is only to find a way to escape.

[devoutish]

And it cannot be for those other things as well?

[heavensreader]

What's there to advance anyone here, Mr. Solomons? This is hardly even a lost city. It's only a ruined one.

[devoutish]

Well, there's the function of the tablets. And there's the function of pulling people from different universes.

[heavensreader]

The tablets, yes... but I don't know about the business of pulling. It seems like very, very dangerous knowledge.

[But even as she says it, it's obvious she doesn't really believe it. It's the temporary upset speaking. Dangerous knowledge is just what Kesara loves.]

[devoutish]

But it's knowledge we're gonna need to know about if we want to travel back, isn't it.

[Alfie's ambivalent on the idea of the knowledge of taking being spread, but as to the knowledge of putting back... that's vital, as far as he's concerned, and he doesn't figure that they can learn about one without learning about the other.]

[heavensreader]

If it is the same thing. Really we do not know. [Wishful thinking, child.]

But if it is, then the person who has the knowledge... he will be the most powerful person in the world.

[devoutish]

Or just the most powerful person in the world that we know.

[Because really, aren't they only seeing just a tiny part of this world, here in Norfinbury?]

[heavensreader]

Definitely in the world that I will be going back to. [Which is the immediately important part.] And I think you too, Mr. Solomons.

[devoutish]

Oh - I wouldn't say that. Certainly it's something that no one on my world can do, but power comes in all sorts of different forms, isn't that right?